The USA and Russia have become the architects of the world [OPINIA]

Ashley Davis13/03/2026

0 64 4 minutes read

Daniele Stracquadanio, author of The Moscow Times, is a PhD student at the University of Trento. Explores frozen conflicts and the post-Soviet space.

The Trump administration has triggered a second wave of interventionism shockwave around the world. For Moscow, which is observing the situation from the side, this is the long-awaited confirmation that the era of multilateralism has come to an end and has been replaced by uncompromising policy of great powers.

Violations of sovereignty, such as the invasion of Ukraine, are no longer condemned. They are being normalized as the standard currency of 21st century state policy.

Four years after the West condemned the invasion of Ukraine, the United States has adopted a position very similar to Moscow. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the need for preemptive strikes to avoid further damage from Iran's retaliation against Israel, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US did not start this war but is seeking to end it.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry now describes the attack on Iran as “an act of planned and unjustified aggression against a sovereign member of the UN.” President Vladimir Putin, however, refrained from direct condemnation. Instead, by calling for de-escalation and offering Moscow as a mediator, Putin is quietly confirming the new status quo: a world where great powers no longer ask for consent when it comes to their strategic interests.

Although double standards are common in international relations, this change seems to go deeper than simple foreign policy hypocrisy.

No more pretences

Washington's unilateralism and preventive wars are nothing new, as seen in President George W. Bush's attempts to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, there is a fundamental difference from today's situation, as the Bush administration at least it tried to act through the UN Security Councilpresenting famously fabricated evidence of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Failing to obtain a direct legal mandate, Washington focused on organizing a coalition of the willing, recruiting dozens of countries to provide support.

This tendency to seek some form of consensus continued in 2011, when the Security Council issued a partial authorization to intervene in Libya. In 2014, the military campaign in Syria was justified by the inability to suppress terrorist factions during the civil war, and these actions were supported by the 90-member global coalition to defeat ISIS.

All pretenses have now been abandoned. The United States unilaterally conducts operations to overthrow foreign governments based on overall national security needs, completely bypassing the United Nations or any other form of multilateral consensus and mirroring the logic of Russia's wars in Georgia and Ukraine.

Even Washington's allies are beginning to recognize and accept this change. At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that the “pleasant fiction” of a rules-based order was over and had been replaced “harsh reality”in which the powerful pursue their interests without restrictions.

In her speech at the 2026 EU Ambassadors' Conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen argued that the EU cannot be the guardian of the “old world order” and must adapt to a new era of realism. During the same event, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, lamented “the weakening of existing international norms, rules and institutions that we have built over 80 years.”

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Unfortunately, by focusing solely on the chaos caused by Iran and Russia and remaining silent on the US-Israeli Operation Epic Fury, it highlighted the double standards that make international law increasingly a fiction.

Domination of superpowers

Growing similarities in the behavior of Washington and Moscow signal the ultimate a break with the provisional rules-based orderwhich was created after World War II. By normalizing unilateral, preventive military action as a standard foreign policy instrument, the United States is moving the world toward a new system in which the invasion of Ukraine is no longer considered a grave violation of international law, but rather a legitimate act of state policy. In this new reality, great powers claim an inherent right to their own spheres of influence – stretching from the near abroad to distant strategic regions, depending on their capabilities.

Nation states are divided into tiers. Small and medium powers – currently Ukraine, Venezuela or Iran, and perhaps Taiwan, or even some European countries – have been relegated to the role of secondary actors whose security is always subordinated to the interests of neighboring powers. Washington and Moscow increasingly sacrifice the principle of territorial integrity in favor of preventive security and undermine the principle of equality between sovereign states in favor of a hierarchical international community.

While the concept of limited sovereignty is reminiscent of the Brezhnev Doctrine of the Cold War and U.S. covert operations to overthrow regimes in South America, today's situation is arguably more volatile. During the Cold War, the world operated within the rigid predictability of two ideological blocs and a common (sometimes cynical) understanding of the rules of the game. These boundaries have now dissolved into fluid power blocs.

Rules are being rewritten in real time, violations are more egregious, and even the hierarchy of the major powers at the top of the system has become dangerously blurred.

In this situation, the United States and Russia seem less and more ideological rivals architects of the worldin which the rule of law plays no role in limiting the rule of force.

Ashley Davis13/03/2026

0 64 4 minutes read